


Like a stream that meets a boulder

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (If you ask me), AU August, F/F, Gen, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Platonic unless you want to interpret it otherwise, Pre-Relationship, Strangers to Rivals to Business Partners, rivals au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When Melinda May reopens the bakery she inherited from her aunt, she wasn't counting on having a business rival like Jiaying, but she wouldn't have it any other way.
Relationships: Jiaying & Melinda May, Jiaying/Melinda May
Comments: 22
Kudos: 33
Collections: AOS AU August 2020, Florchis does AU August





	Like a stream that meets a boulder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [26stars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "Rivals AU" for @aosficnet2 AU August

It begins two days before her inauguration.

Of course, May being who she is, and being the daughter of her mother, has heard enough rumors and done enough investigation herself to know exactly what to expect. 

That doesn’t make the entrance of Jiaying Johnson less spectacular or less poignant. No amount of expecting it would ever diminish the effect of her brand new neighbor, affable smile but icy eyes, entering her shop like she is stepping foot in a wrecked place, a child around Robin’s age in one hand and a platter of pastries on the other.

She places the food on top of May’s counter, calls everything lovely but doesn’t offer a hand or her name. She doesn’t ask for May’s either. Good, because that means they are not going to play naive and pretend to be civil, not even in the beginning. May works best when she already has shown her hand on top of the table, so that is perfectly fine for her.

“To give you a taste of what we make next door.” She points at the pastries with a downplaying gesture. Her voice is saccharine sweet and it would make a lesser woman tremble, but not May.

She bows her head in appreciation, and before she can ever pretend she’d like to strike a conversation, Jiaying is gone as quickly as she came. She has seen enough, May supposes. 

* * *

May’s honest-to-god first impression of her has two relevant points.

One, Jiaying Johnson is exactly the woman May expected her to be: cunning, calculating, and absolutely willing to be as cutthroat as she needs to be to keep her business in place. 

Two, she looks so much younger than May imagined her by the hearsay.

* * *

No one is really to blame, because this conflict is a long-time coming.

May’s aunt managed her bakery in this neighborhood for fifteen years until her cancer treatment made it impossible for her to keep up with both the time and the energy to keep the business running. And now, three years later May has inherited both the physical place, the business connections, and the family recipes. All conveniently six months after Robin’s adoption came through. It felt like too much of a sign to let it slide, and May took the opportunity to put her CIA career behind her and open a new path of opportunities for her and her daughter.

Of course, fate hadn’t taken into account the small tea house that opened right next to the bakery between when her aunt let the shutters down and when May pulled them up again.

It’s something out of her control, but May can understand Jiaying’s anger more than she will ever let the other woman know.

(Probably.)

* * *

On the day of the bakery’s inauguration, the tea house does a “share a teapot with a friend and pay for only one cup” type of sale that doesn’t completely flop May’s own opening strategy but it’s a damn near thing.

She takes the decision on a whim after she closes for the day, despite being exhausted- she didn’t have that many customers, but she had forgotten a bit how extenuating can it be to have to deal with people all day long. Instead of preparing for opening hour tomorrow (though she did clean already), or doing numbers, or having a good cry, she hops Robin up on her hip, takes her purse and without taking off her apron, marches to the tea house next door.

Jiaying is all sweetness and fiery eyes from the register- she doesn’t serve May herself, and May is not sure if that is better or worse-, but May gotta give her this: hers is the best tea she has had in a long time. 

* * *

May allows them both ten days of truce before retaliating- that, truth be told, is way more than she has given any of her adversaries ever before.

She knows- people around the corner will tell you everything you need to know, and a few things you _don’t_ need to know- that on Saturdays, Tea Repair has a different menu than the rest of the week, and it’s supposed to be a big thing that attracts both regular and new customers that are lured in by rare opportunities. 

Of course, that is the exact day May chooses to re-release her aunt’s muffins, which used to be neighborhood-famous, at a discount price. It is a huge success that keeps a line of people outside her shop all day long, way after she has run out of goods to sell.

Of course, when doing the dawn baking, May was especially careful to put apart four muffins: one for her while she was doing the opening, one for Robin’s breakfast, and two that she saves in a small cardboard box till the end of the day.

Daisy- Jiaying’s daughter- gives her a kiss on the cheek and an enthusiastic thank you when she drops the box to them. From behind the register, Jiaying gives her a tiny nod of acknowledgment. May almost does a dance of victory on her way back to her own shop. _This is so on._

* * *

If she is being honest with herself, May doesn’t want to be pulled into a petty competition- she is too old and too jagged for it. She retired to be able to focus on motherhood; to be a better person, especially for her child; to heal. To breathe. None of those goals should involve a pointless squabble, and with another woman nonetheless. 

And yet, if she is being even more honest with herself, she feels herself get filled with renewed energy because of this rivalry. May knows she can be good at this bakery owner business, but she never imagined the amount of imagination and dedication she could pull off in order to beat someone next door. Somehow their competition is making them better businesswomen, and how could she consider detrimental something that has that effect? 

* * *

The cherry on top of the cake is that Robin and Daisy go to the same school and get along infamously well. 

Whatever else is going on between her and Jiaying, May would never let that be a reason to ruin something for her daughter, and she is glad that Jiaying clearly thinks the same. If Melinda May is going to have an enemy, she is going to have a worthy enemy.

The girls come and go from one shop to the other without any restrictions, and they even agreed on an even/odd-day schedule to not overfeed them sweets. On Sundays, when neither of their shops is open, they take the kids to the nearest park together. 

Jiaying always has a book on her, and May is just happy to be able to watch the kids having- what she hopes it is- a normal, happy childhood. It could be surprising that they are capable of coexisting sitting on the same bench without hating each other into oblivion. They can separate themselves from their rivalry, and in some ways, it’s good to know that there is someone out there who gets her and a lot of the things she goes through.

It’s around five months after they met- she means five months after she opened the bakery; not that she is counting time around her relationship with Jiaying- that she feels they have built trust enough- even in between the fueled competition- to make a comment about that. May has brought to the park a scarf she has been knitting for her father even since forever, but she has no actual desire to work on it.

“Before meeting you, I didn’t believe you were human, after a lot of the things I heard about you around the block.”

Jiaying doesn’t even raise her head from _Pride and Prejudice_ to reply. “Didn’t think you were the type to believe everything old white men could say about me.”

May freezes. She had been pushing men out of her way in the field for so long that she has almost forgotten that they try to take ownership of almost everything else in the world too.

Jiaying has the decency to never bring that incident up again and for that May is very grateful. 

* * *

Jiaying is the first person that makes May consider that there is a reason why children are normally raised by a couple (or a village). She was dealing fine with motherhood by herself, but having someone to lean on makes everything so much… easier. 

It is weird how they managed to develop a weird routine of partnership on taking care of the kids while still being ruthless with each other business-wise. After so many afternoons spent together- Jiaying reading aloud to the kids, making faces and voices to accompany each character; May taking the lead of every crafts adventure- Jiaying knows May’s house inside and out, but May would never dream of leaving Jiaying alone for a minute inside her shop. After an unfortunate incident where Daisy managed to get herself locked inside while Jiaying was taking out the trash, May owns a key to their apartment, but she knows that Jiaying has another key that she will never give May, that is the one that guards her recipes.

It is weird, but it works for them, and why would anyone change something that works?

* * *

For the bakery’s new “anniversary”, Lian comes to visit. She wasn’t fully on board with Melinda’s desire to leave the agency, but at the same time, May knows she understands better than almost everyone that it was hard to pair it with parenthood- especially single parenthood. As usual, May doesn’t know what her mother really wanted her to do, and she is not sure she wants to know.

Of course, it takes Lian half an hour and just a glance at Jiaying dropping Daisy with a gift bag and the anniversary-related banter she exchanges with May to do a full, pretty on-point analysis of their relationship.

Lian drops the bomb after she helps Melinda close, while they are drinking some tea together. 

“Have you consider that you and the girl next door could be partners, instead of bitter rivals?”

“We are not bitter,” is May’s reflex reply, but the thought keeps making rounds around her mind long after her mother leaves. 

* * *

It takes her three weeks to decide if there is anything substantial about her mother’s suggestion, but once she takes her decision, she can’t keep it inside one second longer.

That’s how she finds herself closing the bakery a Wednesday mid-morning to run next door, startling some of the customers and making the rumor mill start running like crazy among Jiaying’s servers.

The woman herself is in the kitchen preparing a teapot, and she does not get startled when May waltzes inside her kitchen like a crazed person. Once she finds her, May tries to play it cool, and instead of saying what is on her mind like it’s her usual modus operandi, she walks to the wall that separates this shop from hers and knocks on it.

“How many columns do you think we will need to compensate for bringing down this wall, hm?”

Despite her perfect poker face, a small smile sprouts out on Jiaying’s lips, and who knows? After everything, maybe something good can bloom from this salted earth after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
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> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



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